i love you
by meenist
Summary: in a glance.


The old woman sat upon a dreary greened hill where sopping grass like seaweed would gather between her fingers. She'd wring it like wet faded spinach onto her apron which, stained green, would give her the look of a woman careless. But careless she was not, only tired, and she never let it show except in small ways when she was alone. She would strangle the meadow when it rained, peel bark from the woodtrees (always in insignificant amounts for she loved them), drop a dozen beans on the hard cottage floors in a tinkling tumbling hurry and with her eyes closed, lodge the sounds of their spinning in her mind so when she fell upon her hands and knees to cry she could still her tears with the challenge of where the beans had gone, testing her hearing. Under the stove, camoflauged by a table leg, 'neath the planter, stuck in the apron, peeking from a corner. In some time she'd gather them all and open the window over the meager sink where she'd toss them to the yard. Something would be sure to eat them and they would taste richer for their tumbles and her salty, warm hands.

When the children came to her door she would greet them in faded pink ribbons and a long but airy dress meant for an innocuous kind of flower. As such, it did little to hide, even under cotton, the condition of her aging body which had not grown fuller in places as most long times would allow but began to shrink and wrinkle and turn inside out. Still, the children could not see this for she was very beautiful even as a crumbling woman, and she gave them cozy melting meals and soft hugs that obscured her tender weight and made them very snug.

This never lasted long for they were always on their way to somewhere else, and she held the eyes of boys and girls for different reasons before they left for good. Something mildly wistful would come over her dark eyes at the sight of a young and ready lad, and a pang of something helpless for a girl of twirling skirts and bows, and she'd press them together in twos and with hands enlaced they would trot away and over the hill.

The old lady would examine her hands, then, all of the creases tingling with a past when they were traced by young and long fingered hands, some maybe not so long, but the long ones always came to her first and always would until she forgot herself and, coming to, awoke between her elbows as they rested upon the table top. She was old, and her bones creaked, and perhaps she used to be pretty and was still beautiful but she allowed none of it to sway her gray brown curls, she had moved beyond these things.

In the rainiest of seasons when the children were locked behind respective homelike cages the adult children would come to her and knock on her ivy ridden lodging. They came with dark and light woven baskets with fruits and vegetables and crèmes and string-tied pictures and she would admit them all while imagining clocks or windchimes or dust motes, but they were sure they had her rapt attention.

They came to take pity on her but there was none to give and she lightened their hearts—what they had truly come for—and left smiling and waving and in circuits of brown and blue and salmon with the setting sun. The old lady turned away sharply. There'd be none of that wafting through the door, crawling up her knees and sending sparkles to the woodwork. She closed the door and cried.

There were a few that came to her frome time to time to seek the wisdom she had obtained through years of quiet pensive solitude. They imagined her to be both grizzled and beautiful, cloaked and slow but from deep within there would come a sobering powerful cry. Instead they found a wrinkled-eyed lady small but inviting and taking off their outerwear they tread lightly on her hospitality. Some would offer making dinner and she would oblige, but had they done without her looking a thoughtful stare came over she, who seeing everything in her home, would amuse herself that she was not asked beforehand.

As night came on she expected them to ask, and they expected her to expect them to ask, and so that is why they did, knowing full well that they had fallen into the soft ebbing pattern of time that she had prescribed for them, yet they could do nothing to stop it and she could do nothing of the hint of sadness that came with expecting everything on schedule.

They wanted to know how to move on and live long and be alone and deal with that, and she touched the jigsaw featherwork of a stray bird as she listened, preening a green coat for her aerial friend who pecked at seeming breadcrumbs on a speckled oak table. The old lady would look over at them then, young but weary like she had at one time seen herself and shake her head, hesitant. Please, they would say. Your help.

Being a compassionate creature even after wearing off such painful ways she'd tell them of her lowly self exploration and the empty well of self appreciation shed found. Nothing but wild bluebells grew on her field of vision now, once a desolate place and still underneath this shiny exhibit one still.

I will stay with you, one said. He was not so young and very handsome in a human standard kind of way, long and wirey and clever-handed and bright-eyed. His cheek was freckled, his hair dusted with the petals from her trees out front which clung only to visitors it knew she'd adore, forewarning her of action and thought. She was flattered at his honest sacrifice; he could love her, old and wrinkled as she was, and through there was all innocence about his proposition the others became cold and confused and she herself withdrew. He only smiled. She felt almost young, almost lustrous and tempted but then, this is what she'd barred herself against—the temptations of a ready heart that seemed so true but truly was a fool.

I can read and write what you have never read or written, he promised. A gasp from his companions. The kettle whistled. A deer with its head through the windowpane chirped a song more suited for the old lady's recovering birdfriend. He leaned forward, continued. I see you. He said. I see _you._

How kind, his eyes ablaze and something wise beyond his years around an adolescent skin and dirty, short nails. He cocked a brow in all seriousness as she studied him. He was true but for how long? Forever? Forever she had lived and seen so many things falter. And now, too late had what was promised to her brushed itself of petals and clamboured into the chair shed arranged since she was twenty years to be her husband's place at supper. Here he was decades too late, perhaps a century she never knew and yet he knew, had seen past a human breast into a working heart and tugged, tugged, tugged, found nothing but loose dark blood.

The boy reeled a little in his seat and grasped tabletop with strong broad hands and, righted with the help of his companions and a breathless squeak of chair legs he was righted again, panting. Just a dream, the old lady told herself of their mutual attraction. Just one silly, forgotten dream after another.

What transpired since then grew muffled and ancient under the protective walls of her home and their hearts. As they left they'd all grown a bit, enough to pass her slow and aching life into another greater plane while their bodies were still young. The earth spun silk around their dancing arms as they each went away, perfectly adorned with fruits to bring home, legs to run on, souls to attach. The old lady waved at them from the porch, imagining her thirty-legged friends waiting for her behind the wash basket where they'd been hiding from the crowd. The boy gave one last fitful turn, hesitant to give up his love for her. She shook her head at him and he seemed to understand that she could never be happy, would never be happy, would die a knowledgable and stained princess whose tiny folds had grown tears, spots, and internal infection.

The next morning a sharp rapping came upon her door, and awakened with such a heart-wrenching liveliness she bound to it, barefooted and uncombed. It was him and as she opened to him he grabbed her between his arms, mismatched with hers and yet, he held her close and cursed the stars for sending him so late, so far after his father's treachery, who he was sure now had told stories of this particular woman in this particular house. I have searched all my short life, he said between her throat and shoulder, for the love that he had felt before me, and could not contain for very long. Forgive me for this incompatible body; the injustice of our souls' homes is agonizing, but in flesh I am only a child and you are grown so far.

Though indeed she had grown she felt too young to prohibit his discretion and they trotted to the hill together where, holding her hand to steady her he'd sit beside her on the grass knoll and point to places beyond her eyes, behind her eyes, and between them with a kiss to her forehead which, even in its innocence burned with a needy teenage body. Earthly taboos still worked her mind even as she remained so clear of their deceptive nature. He laughed at her for this but respected her always. He tied her hair away and braided it—yes, he'd learned the art for her and it was not so uncommon in a sensitive man now, not at all, and the artistic gentleness of his fingers made her weep silently against the heels of her hands.

When at last her days were through he looked at her with no less love than a soulmate could and wrapped his fingers round hers still and in between them she died. He fell to his knees beside the flower garbed bed then and looked upon a girl no more than twenty five, who had shut out the world for what must have felt an eternity upon another, and he buried his face in the softness of her stomach and wept for his love, his love that he had come too late for, whose soul he would never find for it had gone. He'd known as soon as he saw her who she was, but she had always been somewhere else. He cursed his line and cursed time, which doubled back upon itself now to give him the sight of her sleeping, smooth and small but full and breathing, pinkcheeked and no longer hollow. And then he blinked away the wetness of his tears (which made him see through his grandfather's eyes) and she was still and sunken like a delicate drape upon a wire bird frame. He loved you, and always you, said the son of his father who'd long since died and left a son with the heart of his soul, not knowing that it would contain a longing for this girl, whose age had finally caught her life and forgiven its longevity. And oh God I love you as well he told the dead woman. I will love you and my son shall love you, and his son after him, and if there is a daughter we will slaughter the boundaries of sex and she shall love you too. But he knew only sons there would be, forever indebted to her heart, as it rotted, as it decayed. Like his dreary father who'd never found the way, but, having married a clever and beautiful woman so like the old lady was able to create a son with the right brain, the right energy, and the will to find his heart's desire.

Grandmother? Said a sweet voice from the door, so like his love's.. and he bounded to the hall to see a slight girl with the graceful eye of the old lady and the sweet cheeks of her too, and in her polite—though not without fear—curtsy he saw the wisdom of his worship. She knew his purpose then, and, coming quietly upon the scene of death she clung to his steady chest, weeping into the folds of his shirt as his heart thumped her jaw, as his hands encircled her head and held her close. There was nothing so deep between them as he had with the old lady, no, but they held hands then and every day to shoulder their pain, their longing. A bird perched upon her shoulder and, green feathers rustling, chirped a love song bestowed to him seasons past. How wise a woman she was, said the boy, old now and wrapped about his wife, the granddaughter. Aye, and your grandfather as well, she said in a whispered voice, for over time they had revealed to each other the mirror images of their upbringing, where from her ancestor's blood she'd inherited the insatiable urge for that man, for the man that had been his grandfather as her mother's mother had been in his heart. And now peacefully in this they both could sleep, knowing there is a sadness in the birth of true love, but that they had found it, together, forever, quite before their time where no one would see it but the bird, the deer, and a bean under the mattress.

A huge black animal imposed itself on the cowering flower which, missing half of its petals, allowed a


End file.
